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IPL 4 begins tomorrow 8th April 2011, with opening match in Chennai. Each of the 10 teams play 14 games with 7 home and 7 away. Making it 70 matches. There would be 4 more maches to determine the winner of IPL 4, the final match to be held on 28th May in Mumbai. The format for the final 4 teams is slightly different with the top 2 teams getting an extra chance to qualify for the final thus getting to the top 2 positions important in league phase.

The top 3 teams of course qualify for the Champions Trophy, later this year.

12 Cities play host to the matches. Pune team has their home base in Navi Mumbai and Kochi team plays couple of matches in Indore while Kings XI Punjab play few matches in Dharamsala. With 74 matches in 50 days it would be a tough schedule for every team, what with travelling across India

With Lalit Modi, the architect of the first 3 versions, nowhere to be seen it would be a different tournament at least from the glamor point of view. Which is good as well as concentration would be on good cricket rather than good looking models and parties.

My predictions – Mostly based on team compositions, players, captains and coaches and mostly gut feeling.

MI, RCB, PSW and CSK as the top 4 and Kochi and Rajasthan Royals the bottom 2.

The 10th IPL Team Kochi has finally come up with a name. Wish they had remained as ‘Kochi IPL Team’ instead or ‘Rendezvous Team’ as called by the owners. But now they are called ‘Kochi Indi Commandos‘ !!!

What does that even mean ?? What kind of silly name is Indi Commando. The team has been making all kinds of mistakes and errors and controversial things. Their team selection involving Sreesanth, Ravindra Jadeja was bad enough. Then they wanted Ganguly which they couldn’t get. They have all the discarded KKR players and now this.

Finally the format of 10 team IPL 4 has been decided and its well quite different from what was being speculated earlier. Each team gets to play 14 matches. 7 home and 7 away. Each team plays 5 other teams on home-away basis, plays 2 teams only at home and 2 teams away. Thus totaling 70 matches. The top 4 teams would go through the semi finals. Thus 74 matches would be played over a period of 7 weeks or so. Final schedule will be out soon, meanwhile here is the draw for each team.

Here are the squads of all 10 teams post the Mega Auction. 127 Players were bid for in the auction and adding the 12 retained earlier, 139 players are now part of various teams. The teams still need to sign Indian domestic players to fill up the team vacuums and make up the playing XI.

Listed below are all the players, their teams and the price they were bought for.

Finally, After all the long litigations and hours of meetings it almost seems final that IPL 4 would have 10 teams and 74 matches. There would 2 groups of 5 each which would play matches on Home and Away basis thus producing 40 matches. The next round will have top 6 teams playing against each other in home- away basis and thus producing another 30 matches. 2 semi finals, 1 3rd place match and the mega final would make it 74 matches over a period of 6 weeks.

The players auction has been finalized for 8th and 9th January 2011. There are 416 players available for the first round of auction. This list includes heavyweights like Rahul Dravid, YuvRaj Singh, Zaheer Khan from India and International stars like Brian Lara, Micheal Hussey and Kevin Peterson. Out of these the list will be pruned down to a more reasonable number by December 24,2010 based on the interests shown by the 10 franchises. The base prices for the players are fixed but that is of course not indicative of the actual prices. Notable absentees in the list are Ricky Ponting, Mitchell Johnson and Micheal Clarke who have resisted IPL’s money in favor of longer International career. Pakistani players are also not part of the list.

12 players have been retained by various franchises. Mumbai Indians have retained Sachin, Harbhajan Singh, Malinga and Pollard while Chennai have put faith in Dhoni, Raina, Vijay and Albie Morkel. Delhi have retained Sehwag while Bangalore are happy with Virat Kohli. Rajasthan have retained Shane Warne and Shane Watson. The other 3 teams namely Deccan, Knightriders and Kings XI Punjab and the 2 new teams of Pune and Kochi go with empty roster in the auction and the full 9 Million $ to spend.

Apart from the auctions the team will be entitled to sign the Indian domestic players which will make the backbone of any team. BCCI is yet to decide upon the final date from which this signing can happen.

The auctions would surely be as keenly followed as the actual IPL Matches.

IPL 4 is set to be played 6 days after the conclusion of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011. The tournament is now about 4 months away, however due to the various controversies neither the no. of teams, the players, no. of matches, format anything is known to the public and not even to the players and team owners. It was supposed to be a 10 Team event when 2 new teams Pune and Kochi were added last year in much publicized team auction.

Later due to the ownership issues and various non-cricketing reasons Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab were suspended from the IPL and the Kochi team was always on the brink of suspension due to its various ownership issues. At one stage it looked there would be just 7 teams and an eighth team would be added after a fresh round of auction. However as things stand today Kochi is back in the fold and so is Rajasthan Royals based on the court order. Punjab team is likely to be there as well as their case is similar to the Royals. Thus it would be a 10 team affair.

Player auction which was supposed to be held in November had been postponed to January and now it seems may further gets postponed to March, i.e. during the ICC World Cup. As the BCCI is yet to clear off the court cases.

No one is sure about the format, the no. of matches either and would a round robin home-away format will be followed or a changed format of 2 groups would be followed is yet to be decided. The teams are not sure about the exact playing dates as well. The Player retention rules are even more controversial with teams having a choice of up to 4 players to retain from their existing team, but then they lose half their auction limit of 9 Million $. It seems not all teams are in favor of retention however Mumbai Indians and Chennai Superkings are quite keen on it.

As of now it seems Mumbai have decided to retain Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh, Lasith Malinga and either of Keiron Pollard and J P Duminy. Chennai have decided to retain Dhoni, Raina, Murali Vijay and Albie Morkel while Bangalore are keen only on Virat Kohli and Kolkata are keen only on Chris Gayle and not even their very own Ganguly. Delhi are sure to keep Sehwag with them and possibly Ashish Nehra, Dirk Nannes and maybe Gautam Gambhir too. Rajasthan have opted for Shane Warne, Watson and possibly Yusuf Pathan. Deccan Chargers have decided not to retain anybody while Kings XI Punjab are still awaiting for court ruling to decide anything. There are clearly no takers for veteran players such as Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman, Kumble and so on. The teams also do not have a fixed strategy and things are quite muddled at the moment.

Unless and until clarity comes from the court regarding status of various teams and BCCI decided upon the format of the game and auction dates and rules nothing can be sure.

Although one thing is sure, BCCI is hell bent on hosting the IPL 4 by hook or crook.

2nd Edition of Champions League of T20 cricket begin in South Africa on 10th Sept- 2010.

The First edition was played in India in 2009 October. The first edition had 12 teams. This one has 10 teams owing to the fact that 2 English teams are not participating this year due to clash of the schedule with their domestic commitments.

10 Teams meaning there are 2 groups of 5 each, with each team playing their group members once. Thus resulting in 20 games followed by 2 semi finals and final. 23 Games in the period of 16 days or so. The matches would be played across South Africa under lights in the evening period which is a prime television time for the subcontinent viewers.

The 3 IPL teams qualified are the 2010 Champions Chennai Superkings, runner up Mumbai Indians and 3rd placed Banagalore Royal Challengers. Winners of the first edition of Champions were New South Wales from Australia who defeated Trnidad and Tobago from West Indies in the finals. Sadly both these teams have not qualified for the Champions League this year. Infact such is the unpredictability of T20 cricket that only 2 teams Royal Challengers Bangalore and Wayamba from Sri Lanka were present in the previous edition.

Looking at the draws, the teams, the schedule, the South African conditions with early season pitches and the nature of T20 cricket it would be very difficult to predict anything. My support is of course for all 3 Indian teams and especially Mumbai Indians with Sachin Tendulkar leading it.

So finally we have new format for the next 3 IPLs at least beginning from 2011. IPL governing council has done away with all teams playing each other home and away and have come up with a composite format which is a combination of home-away matches along with division of teams into groups and a slightly complex playoff formula.

There are 10 teams now, there would be 2 groups of 5 each. Teams in same group would play each other on home-away basis. The teams would also play other 5 teams from the 2nd group on either home or away basis and would play an additional game against 1 of the team from 2nd group. Thus each team would get to play 14 games, 7 at home and 7 away. The groups and the schedules would be decided by a random draw. These would lead to 70 games of group stages. This will be followed by 4 Playoff games deciding the winner. The top 2 teams from group stage would play in the 1st semi final. The 3rd and 4th team from the group stage would play in a knockout match. The winner of this knockout match and the loser of 1st semi final would play the 2nd semi final. The winners of 2 semi finals would then play the big final. Thus there would be 74 games in total. This format gives lot more importance of qualifying higher i.e. in top 2 in the group stage. The top 3 teams of course also qualify for the Champions League.

The teams would also retain upto 4 players from their existing squad and can retain maximum 2 foreign players. The teams also have salary cap for the entire squad of 30 and have newly defined catchment area for Indian domestic talent. Also the Indian domestic players have salaries predefined based on their experience.

Thus IPL’s new format looks complex to begin with but satisfies everybody. The franchises get at least 14 games. There are totally 74 games so squeezing the entire tournament within 6 weeks is feasible. The no. of matches remaining almost the same as earlier seasons also means similar revenues for broadcasters and same exposure to advertisers. The random draw for groups and home and away matches would make it more exciting. The group stages match would be more important.

The complex playoff format is being tried for the first time in IPL but has been already tried successfully in New Zealand domestic cricket.

Finally some sense is prevailing with respect to IPL. With the increase of teams from 8 to 10, it was expected that with the home and away format there would be 18 matches for each franchise and thus 90 league matches plus 2 semis and final and 3rd place thus making it 94 matches for the 4th season of IPL, to be played in April-May 2011.

94 matches would have been a bit too much with IPL season going almost 6-7 weeks and in the month of May in India, with the hot weather, it would have been deadly for the players involved. Of course the team franchises wanted the format to remain that way as more the matches, more the revenue for them, more advertising money, more stadium receipts, more television money. Some players were against it but did not speak much in the press for the fear of backlash from the franchises, after all the big auction is coming up in October 2010. Of course ex-IPL commissioner Lalit Modi was all for more matches. Now that Lalit Modi is absconding and no longer relevant, the governing council is taking wiser steps.

The governing council is meeting on August 20 to decide upon all these issues. The format would be revised to have 5 teams in each group who would play each other on home-away basis thus making 40 matches and thenthey would play 1 match with teams from other group, thus making 25 matches and totaling 65 matches for the league stage. Add 4 more matches and it would be 69 matches totally with each team playing 13 to 15 matches maximum.

There are chances that there would be a cap on no. of matches each Individual player, especially International players, would be allowed to play and would be limited to 12, but this is yet to be confirmed. Also on the cards are auction related rules which are not yet final and would be decided only after the Champions league matches in September 2010.

Lets hope IPL emerges as a strong brand after all the controversies in the previous season and we have a great tournament.